


five times tony needed a babysitter and the one time he was the babysitter

by sky_reid



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Basically, Comedy, Crack, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Team, Team Bonding, Tony Has Issues, and everyone is done with him, don't even ask, tony gets into trouble left and right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 23:03:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sky_reid/pseuds/sky_reid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony may be a grown man, but he never quite forgot how to be a child. Neither do his friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	five times tony needed a babysitter and the one time he was the babysitter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eruannalle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eruannalle/gifts).



> happy ny's mims sorry i never listen to you

 

_Five Times Tony Needed a Babysitter_

_and the One Time He_ Was _the Babysitter_

 

_i. fury, coulson_

 

It's kind of ridiculous really, Tony thinks, that he still doesn't have the damn clearance to work in some of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s labs. Granted, he could probably hack into their system and give himself clearance, and it would probably be weeks before they figured it out, but he can't imagine Fury not being suspicious over his sudden access to everything (the man _is_ made of 80% suspicion, Tony is pretty sure, however scientifically improbable that may be). He doesn't even know what it is that they're trying to gain by not giving him clearance when he can just walk in at any time and be taken to see whatever he wants, followed by some agent or other like he might steal something (as if he couldn't buy the entirety of S.H.I.E.L.D. if he so chose).

 

It's annoying enough being shadowed by an awe-struck kid in a uniform, but having Fury and Coulson peeking over his shoulders as he examines the new prototype for a portable unibeam is absolute hell. Coulson keeps politely asking him to explain things that, and Tony means this with little offence since he actually likes Coulson, he couldn't possibly hope to understand and Fury just mumbles under his breath and occasionally barks orders that Tony ignores with increasing difficulty. It's distracting and annoying and Tony doesn't like being distracted and annoyed especially when he's handling a potentially deadly weapon he's not even sure works in a lab that isn't his own surrounded by people whose deaths he _really_ doesn't want to be responsible for.

 

Unfortunately for all three of them, what Tony does when he's irritated is tinker with things he shouldn't tinker with which is how he ends up unintentionally frying a circuit in the unibeam, making it fire a weak laser up into the ceiling (pure coincidence he held it up, not that he'll let anyone think it was anything other than his great reflexes and quick thinking), let out a hissing sound and then end up getting swallowed up by a puff of acrid smelling black smoke.

 

Someone pulls Tony backwards and to the floor, landing on top of him and someone else triggers some sort of a safety protocol that locks the room down and douses them all in white powder. It's a few seconds of peace later when Coulson (of course it was Coulson) disentangles himself from Tony, stands up and straightens out his suit and Fury curses Tony's existence without a pardon.

 

“ _This_ is exactly why you need a god damn babysitter!” Fury informs him angrily. “And it was our only prototype too!”

 

Tony pulls himself up by a chair leg and begins to dust himself off. The portable unibeam, now no more than a blackened metal shell, coughs up another pathetic cloud of smoke. It's really not a great loss, Tony thinks, any weapon that can be destroyed by a few wires rubbing the wrong way is not a good weapon. The way he sees it, he actually did them a favour. “Well, you did call me here to help you figure out if it works,” he tells Fury in what he thinks passes for a level tone. “I can now tell you with certainty that it doesn't.” He can't quite help a smirk. That is, until Fury gives him a rather scary one-eyed look and he realizes he's locked in that room with the two of them for the foreseeable future.

 

_ii. romanoff, barton_

 

“I wasn't technically _breaking in_ ,” Tony repeats patiently. “It is my house after all.” Clint gives him an unimpressed look and Natasha doesn't even bother with that much.

 

Tony leans back into the couch they'd pushed him on. He's never been more glad for Pepper's taste in furniture. But knowing that some S.H.I.E.L.D. ants are going through his stuff now, looking for recording devices and god knows what else when they probably couldn't tell apart a bug from one of Tony's misplaced old arc reactors makes him fidgety and he can't sit still for long. He ends up standing and starting to pace, but he's barely made a step when two hands, one large and calloused and one softer, smaller and no less rough, grab at his shoulders and push him back down. He covers the little surprised sound he makes with a laugh.

 

“This is ridiculous, you realize that right?” he asks. “It's _my_ house, I can check it myself! How do I know you're not the ones placing bugs everywhere?”

 

“You don't,” Natasha replies simply and Clint just snorts. They're an odd pair, the two of them.

 

Tony is just about done with the plan of distraction that would get him out of there and back into his lab before Fury and his minions can defile it with their ignorance when Natasha says, “Don't even think about it, Anthony. You have this look about you of a child who knows they're about to make a mess.”

 

Tony doesn't quite cringe at the use of his full name but it's a near thing. He huffs and crosses his arms over his chest, giving Natasha a defiant look (though, really, he'd rather avoid making an enemy out of her if he can); she just smiles and shakes her head a little.

 

When Tony was a kid he had this nanny who always called him _Anthony_. Before her he hadn't even realized it bothered him much when people addressed him like that, but she always made him feel like he was in trouble and she had this look about her that gave him nightmares of her chasing him down with a wooden spoon in her hand (he was a kid, okay, it seemed scary at the time) and her cooking was atrocious too. And to top it all off, she liked to wear the utterly impractical for childcare bombshell dresses (he thinks she may have been trying to land a marriage with his father) which may or may not have slipped too open a few times, scarring Tony for life.

 

He tries not to imagine Natasha as his nanny, in one of those dresses, nice as the image is (so he fails, he's not exactly perfect), because he works with her now and he has this half-irrational fear that she can read his mind. By the look on Clint's face, his thoughts are going in much the same direction as Tony's.

 

_iii. odinson_

 

In all his life, Tony never dreamed of seeing a cursed castle or a gods' gathering place or any such thing from fairytales under various names, not even when he was a child. He always thought of ways he could recreate them or explain them through science. He still does when he looks around himself and takes in the unresearched territory that is Asgard.

 

There's a niche in the wall to his right, it houses a giant tube of something that looks like purple plasma. Tony reaches out to pick it up only to be stopped by a hand on his forearm. “I wouldn't touch that if I were you,” Thor says with a little smile that makes Tony want to touch it even more.

 

“I thought I paid for the full interactive tour,” he says, not moving his eyes or his hand from the pillar of light.

 

“You _paid_ to be here? Did my brother trick you as well?”

 

He sounds genuinely serious and Tony would laugh if Thor's grip wasn't loosening and he didn't _really_ want to touch the damn thing, grateful for how easy Thor is to distract from his Natasha appointed and completely unnecessary duty of watching over him. As soon as his hand is mostly free, Tony closes the gap between it and the mystery object with elation.

 

And then immediately regrets it when he ends up facing a bunch of angry looking ugly troll-like creatures with clubs. He has a moment to panic before Thor is at his side, fighting the creatures with a mildly amused look on his face. For once, Tony is glad to have been assigned a nanny.

 

_iv. rhodes_

 

“Remind me again why I'm here,” Rhodey needles, replacing the clip of his gun with practiced moves. Tony empties his gun over his shoulder aiming for the general direction from which they're being attacked.

 

“To prevent situations like this!” he replies, ducking when Rhodey stands up for better overview of the room. For people who don't normally fight like this they make quite a good team.

 

“How did we end up in this mess anyway?” Rhodey yells over the gunfire.

 

Tony knows exactly the reply Rhodey wants him to give. Naturally, he looks up from his hideout behind the couch and grins, giving the exact opposite answer. “Well, clearly _someone_ wasn't doing their job!” Rhodey just rolls his eyes.

 

_v. rogers_

 

“I really don't get what the problem is, I got everyone out, didn't I?” Tony doesn't really know why he's on the defensive side here, he did, after all, just save the day, no matter what Steve thinks.

 

“You could have killed yourself!” Steve shouts angrily, a vein on his forehead standing out more with every word. Tony wants to laugh at it, but Steve looks actually angry and maybe a little worried so he doesn't want to risk getting punched in the face. “You could have killed everyone in that building!”

 

“But I didn't!”

 

“But you _could have_!” Steve insists and really, Tony is getting rather tired with people being ungrateful to him when he actually _does things_.

 

“Would you rather I had?” he yells back. “Then you wouldn't have to waste your time yelling at me!” It's not quite his smoothest comeback, especially not to someone who fought in WWII and lost friends to it.

 

To his credit, Steve only straightens his back and puts a little more distance between them. “No, of course not,” he says calmly and Tony doesn't get to react before Steve is walking away.

 

_i. anthony e. stark_

 

It's no secret that Tony doesn't like sharing his lab. No, really, he literally puts up a sign on the door. But when you live with five curious-by-profession superheroes, signs don't really mean much apparently because when he stumbles through the glass door with his third cup of coffee, they're all _there_. Poking at his stuff and going through his drawers and _hanging out_. _In his lab_.

 

“What the hell is going on here?” he asks the room at large only to find that literally nobody cares; Natasha and Clint are lounging at his desk, Steve appears to be figuring out how to use the floating screens and Thor is out-dumming Dummy, so all in all it seems like he is safe (or at least, his work is safe, he's not entirely sure about the intruders), but he almost has a heart attack when he sees the light at the back of the room is on which means someone (hopefully Bruce) is there, working, and that's a restricted area and Jarvis would have to have let them in and so help him, Tony will reprogramme his entire house if Jarvis has failed him. “I swear to god, it's like living with children,” he grumbles as he heads to the back of the lab.

 

Apparently there is a god because the person who's looking at something under Tony's microscope _is_ Bruce. Tony's shoulders relax in relief as he watches Bruce carefully adjust the microscope to suit him and hum something to himself. He thinks about joining Bruce, but the thing is, if there is one person Tony trusts with his research, it's probably Bruce and it's definitely not Steve so he might as well leave Bruce to his work and focus his energy on where it's more needed.

 

He comes back to find Thor soaked wet and Clint and Natasha laughing as Steve tries to pat Thor down with his own cape. He sighs. He might have been a little too harsh on everyone who's been tasked with watching over him _ever_.


End file.
